A phrase used by
William Dembski in a (I was about to say
node there, I must be an addict)
an essay about
intelligent design1. An example given to explain this ..odd.. phrase is that of an
extraterrestrial message in the form of a (long) string of primes. The 'complexity' in this sequence is in the length (!) and the 'specified' is in the choice of primes. That is,
one prime would'n't be
complex while
many random numbers
would'n't be 'specified'.
Apart from the idiosyncratic definition of complex, the real problem is in the specification. Who specified primes? The (supposed) aliens chose the sequence and we specified which sequences are 'intelligent'. Arguments about S.E.T.I. aside (I mean it!) the definition seems meaningless :
"Specified complexity is reliably correlated with the effects of intelligence"
If (specified = intelligent) then this statement is trivially true.
We are intelligent, and if we specify a sequence to be intelligent then it is defined to be so. It's the opposite of
GIGO - intelligence in, intelligence out.
1 : www.discovery.org - find the article yourself.